After September 11, 2001, U.S. officials authorized the cruel treatment and torture of prisoners held in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, and the CIA's secret prisons overseas.

This database documents the U.S. government's official experiment with torture. At present, the database contains well over 100,000 pages of government documents obtained primarily through Freedom of Information Act litigation and requests filed by the ACLU, and through litigation of Salim v. Mitchell, a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of the survivors and the family of a dead victim of the CIA torture program. To learn more about the database, please read the About and Search Help pages. If you're a developer, you can also access this data through our API.

This document, prepared by the Chief of Medical Services, summarizes and reflects upon the rendition, detention and interrogation program. The findings include that in a particular no evidence was found that the use of waterboard produced ...

This cable provides a report of day 5 of the cycle of interrogation carried out on detainee Abu Zubaydah on August 8, 2002. It includes details of interrogators using a combination of waterboarding, walling, cramped confinement, and hooding in ...

This cable provides a report of day 6 of the cycle of interrogation carried out on detainee Abu Zubaydah on August 9, 2002. It includes details of interrogators using a combination of waterboarding, walling, cramped confinement, and hooding in ...

This cable provides a report of day 8 of the cycle of interrogation carried out on detainee Abu Zubaydah on August 11, 2002. It includes details of interrogators using a combination of waterboarding, walling, cramped confinement, and hooding in ...

This memo includes: 1) a chronology detailing the evolution of the CIA's High-Value Detainee Interrogation Techniques, how they were defined, legalized, and authorized; 2) a report on the intelligence collected after the application of the ...

This June 18, 2002 cable details the message that the interrogation team delivered to Abu Zubaydah, which is redacted, the interrogation techniques used on him and his reactions to them, and an assessment of his resistance posture. The cable ...

This August 4, 2002 cable details the first and second sessions of the aggressive phase of interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. Throughout these sessions Abu Zubaydah continued to maintain his position that he had no additional information.

This cable details the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah that took place on August 5, 2002 at the which the IC SERE psychologists were present. This interrogation included the use of walling, the water board, attention grab, confinement box, hooding, ...

This cable details the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah that took place on August 6, 2002. This interrogation included the use of walling, waterboarding "numerous times", attention grab, insult slap, confinement box, and hooding. The cable states ...

This July 2002 cable is a request for guidance from headquarters on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. The cable expresses hesitation about using these techniques on subjects being held in solitary confinement without legal ...

Search Options

You can use this field to limit your search by the branch, agency, or component of the government that authored the document or documents that you are looking for. Note that you cannot search both by the name of a specific author (the field above this one) and by the authoring branch/agency/component. For advanced help on this feature, and for an explanation of the acronyms of the agencies, see our general help.

You can use this field to limit your search by the branch, agency, or component of the government that received the document or documents that you are looking for. Note that you cannot search both by the name of a specific recipient (the field above this one) and by the receiving branch/agency/component. For advanced help on this feature, and for an explanation of the acronyms of the agencies, see our general help.